By way of background I have an established pattern of sharing care my two children 50/50 in an alternating 3/4 day cycle. One boy age 12 and a daughter age 16. Stbx claims CB and other benefits including carers allowance for 16 yo who gets DLA at highest rate. I voluntarily paid CM at old CSA rate from separation in January 2013 and other costs. DLA went to my daughter and covers some of her additional expenses.
This ticked along quite comfortably until financial discussions started and stbx decided I should be paying more. In a first draft of a
Consent Order she asked for around £500 pcm plus 50% cost of "other activities". I offered to voluntarily pay at or above CMS rate and other costs by prior arrangement. This resulted in an application being made to the CMS in November. My first contact with them was a letter at the end of November saying I had been assessed as having to pay around £10K annually.
Telephone contact with CMS was not as bad as I expected, but they ignored my request for only written communication. In my first conversation I discovered that stbx had claimed I had my children two nights a week. I pointed out their own guidance that in entirely equal care there is no case. More letters with reducing assessments followed until a case officer rang on 30/12/13 at which point my daughter had moved in with me permanently. This call was to confirm that despite having equal care I should still pay because stbx claims CM. I was the asked a number of questions which are apparently used to determine if the care is equal.
Which parent does the school contact first?
What address is with the doctor or dentist?
How much time and money do I spend with each child?
etc.
I refused to answer the last one as that has nothing to do with care or parenting per se. At no point was I asked for evidence and it seems that the claimant is believed over the other parent and they ring between parents often. This resulted in my daughter getting a rather inappropriate text from stbx outlining the penury that would result and a denial to the CMS that this was the case.
On new year''s eve I was rung again by CMS and my daughter spoke to them and explained the situation. Today I received a call saying the case was closed, there was no resident parent and so no paying parent and would I like to request an assessment of my stbx.
I''m going to carry on making voluntary payments, but feel like the bureaucracy and inefficiency have caused a whole heap of unnecessary trouble. If you have real 50/50 care it is impossible to prove and could come down to rather arbitrary detail that will inevitably change over time.
Rant over!
